Toddler Towel Tutorial

Today, after weeks months of procrastination, I made this pink, hooded toddler towel for my sweet little Smooch.  She outgrew her baby towels ages ago.  It was originally inspired by this beautiful yellow towel that my friend Amey made for precious Princess when she was roughly Smooch's age.  Yes, what some people may mistake as creativity in my life, is actually little more than an "I bet I could make that" attitude.  I get it from my dad...and his mother.

See how awesomely long and big this towel is?  I love it for taking to the pool and for use after baths.  Princess adores that fact that it has a hood even though it is a big girl towel because she feels much warmer that way. 

The first thing you need to make this towel is a regular bath towel and a wash cloth.  I used a matching wash cloth, but it would be fun to do a complementing color as well.   I used Target RE brand towels for this.  They're inexpensive, easy to sew through, fast-dry towels that comes in lots of fun bright colors.

Then choose your desired ribbon for the trim.  I like a ribbon that is at least an inch wide.

The first thing you're going to do is sew the hood.  To do this you simply fold your wash cloth in half, right sides together as demonstrated by my lovely assistant below.

Next stitch one of the short ends, taking care to line up your edges perfectly so you don't have a crooked hood.  I stitched a good inch or so in from the edge.  You will see why in a moment.

After you're finished with that straight stitch, do a zig zag stitch between the straight stitch and the edge.  The reason the zig zag stitch is so important is because you are going to trim off the existing finished edge of the wash cloth - it is too thick and bulky to sit against your little one's head nicely.

The below photo shows both of my stitches completed.

Trim off excess about 1/4 inch away from your zig zag stitch.

Turn right side out, and admire your little hood.

Next center the hood on the top of the bath towel.  You will be sewing on the inside of the hood and towel (wrong side).  Do you notice how much let my hood overlap on the towel?  Adjust yours so that your hood is a size you like.  Once sewn in place, my hood ended up being about 9 inches long.  That will give Smooch plenty of room to grow while still not being overly huge.  Now once you're done sewing the hood in place, you could trim off the excess of the hood, but if you do keep in mind that you will want to do another zig zag stitch to prevent unraveling.  I just left mine like this. 

And yes, as you can see I am a lazy sewer and I don't like to pin my stuff down.  *Gasp*  Pin if you must. :-)

Once that is done, you are ready to put on the decorative ribbon trim.  There are lots of ways you could secure the end of your ribbon, but as shown below, I doubled the end of my ribbon under itself and stitched it down that way.

This is the part where you get to see how well you can sew in a straight line. For beginners:  I like to put my needle in the position furthest to the right and just line the edge of my ribbon up with the inside edge of the right side of the presser foot.  That way I sew the ribbon down nice and close to the edge but I have something really visual to follow so I don't mess it up.  I guess I failed to show that very well in the picture.

Sew along the top edge of the ribbon and the bottom edge.  You can place the ribbon as close to or far away from the top edge of the towel as you like.

Once the ribbon is on, you are done!  If you want, you can put ribbon along the top of the hood as well (but if you do, it would be much easier to do it before you sew the hood onto the towel).  You can also put ribbon along the bottom edge of the towel and otherwise embellish to your heart's content.  But I'm a simple gal and often believe that less is more. 

In fact, if you really wanted to get crazy, you could go for an entirely different look and make an animal face out of the hood like this.

Introduce your child to his/her new towel, and take a dozen pictures of them loving it.

Report back if you give it a try!